POST #114
This blogpost is dedicated to E.D., with best holiday wishes, December 2017.
This blogpost is dedicated to E.D., with best holiday wishes, December 2017.

ORIGINAL SONG: "The Twelve Days of Christmas", traditional carol, of English or possibly French origin, published in its current known form by Frederic Austin 1909.
PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, January, 2016.
KEYWORDS: traditional, holidaysong, medical
This parody-song is just in time for the end of Twelvetide. Recently there has been some emphasis on the excessive use of
multi-vitamin supplementation pills in the general population. But, many of our processed foods are already enriched with these essential chemical nutrients, and freedom from
vitamin-deficiency diseases (avitaminoses), such as rickets, beriberi and
pellagra is a gift for all mankind.
The pronunciation of the chemical names
is a bit difficult, and for some of them, alteration from the typical was
necessary to fit the meter of the original; these instances have been flagged by capital
letters indicating the vowels which require unusual emphasis; e.g. ribOflavin, pEllagra.
The bracketed material
is included for edification and for comparison with the original
lyrics, and is not meant to be sung. In the second verse, (?)indicates cases in which a clinical deficiency state is not certain.
THE AVITAMINOSES
(to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas"- final verse)
Twelve funky diet factors,
(12.)
Ascorbic Acid (vit C)
(11.)
Retinol’s good for vision (vit A)
(10.) Cholecalcif’rol (vit D)
(9.) Alpha-tocoph’rol (vit E)
(8.) K – phylloquinone (vit K)
(7.) Hydroxo-cobal’min (vit B12)
(6.) Then, Folic Acid (vit B9)
(5.) Next, bIOtIn (vit B7)
(4.) PantOthenate (vit B5)
(3.) Niacin (vit B3)
(2.) RibOflavin (vit B2)
(1.) And the first ‘B’ known as
ThiamIne (vit B1)
For each vitamin, twelve-odd,
Its lack will cause disease:
C-lack
gives scurvy
A-absence
gives night blindness
Rickets
and fractures (vit D)
‘Oxidative damage’? (Vit E)
K-lack gives bleeding
![]() |
C. Eijkman 1929 Nobel Prize in Physiology discovery of anti-neuritic factor (B1): commemorative stamp |
Fetal malformations (vit B9)
Low fertIl-I-tY? (vit B7)
NeurOpathy? (vit B5)
PEllagra (vit B3)
Amplifies B3 (vit B2)
Brain disorders and beriberI.
(vit B1)
(Outro)
A dozen Nobel Prizes
Awards in Chemistry,
And Med’cine and
Physiology.* Casimir Funk, working to elaborate the 'antineuritic' property of rice bran for potential therapeutic use in beriberi, isolated a substance that he called 'vitamine' as it contained an amino- chemical group.
HOTLINKS TO OTHER MEDICAL-THEMED SONG-POSTINGS
Avitaminoses (see below)
...AND A FEW LIMERICK-BASED SONGS
Singable Limerick-Medley #17: Nuclear Cardiology
Singable Limerick-Medley #20: Medical Imaging
(Click on any chord-chart slide to move to 'song-presentation mode'; then navigate through thumbnails at bottom of page.)
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